This invention relates to a racket hand-grip having a wound grip strip that is mechanically attached, at one end, to the bottom of the hand-grip, in a detachable manner.
Grip strips are normally fixed to the bottom end of the hand-grip of a racket, especially a tennis racket, by means of a small steel or brass pin and are subsequently wound around the periphery of the handgrip. A nail is inserted also at the other end of the wound strip preventing detachment of the grip strip. By gluing the grip strip to the shaft of the racket frame, a slipping of the individual windings with respect to one another is also prevented. If the grip strip is changed frequently, the end of the hand-grip will gradually be damaged. This phenomenon of wear occurs especially when grips are used that are made of plastic, preferably foamed plastic.
It is, therefore, a primary objective of the present invention to provide a means by which this type of damage to the hand-grip may be avoided. In addition, it is also an object to enable the mounting of the grip strip to be carried out simply, rapidly and cost-effectively.
These objectives are achieved in accordance with features of preferred embodiments of the invention through the provision of a slot in the bottom end of the hand-grip into which an end of the grip strip is insertable and securable by a wedging or interior fastening means, as well as by provision of nonadhesive securing members on the periphery of the handgrip.
While it is known to mechanical fasten the end of a grip strip within a slot in an end of a hand-grip of a golf club as well as to provide a non-adhesive means for positionally securing the windings of the strip on the periphery of the hand-grip (U.S. Pat. No. 3,140,873), this known technique is relatively expensive, in practice, since it requires a special elastic grip strip with a metallic tip, and since it requires complicated molds to produce a required underlisting having a spiral strip receiving groove that widens inwardly to form a keyway for the grip strip. Furthermore, while such a hand-grip arrangement may provide an effective grip surface for a golf club handle, because of the fact that windings of the grip strip must be separated from each other by an exposed rib formed on the surface of the underlisting, such an arrangement may pose gripping problems if it were utilized on rackets for more active sports, such as tennis and racketball, wherein the player's hands are often wet with perspiration and his or her hand position is rapidly changing grip positions for serve, forehand and backhand strokes.
On the other hand, in accordance with the present invention no special metal tipped elastic grip is required nor is it required to utilize an expensive to produce, keyway-grooved underlisting. Moreover, the grip strip can be secured on the periphery of the handgrip without adhesives, yet adjacent windings of the grip strip need not be separated by less gripable unwrapped ribs. Furthermore, no separate pin or plug member is required to attach the end of the grip strip to the bottom of the racket hand-grip since, instead of a clamping or nailing-down of the end of the grip strip, the invention utilizes means, forming part of the hand-grip, to hold the end of the grip strip in conjunction with the tensional pulling effect of the winding of the grip strip about the hand grip.
These and further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more obvious from the following description when taken in connection with the accompanying drawings which show, for purposes of illustration only, several embodiments in accordance with the present invention.